Google I/O 2017 has been confirmed to take place from the 17-19 of May, in which we expect the company will announce new products, services, and there’s a good chance we will learn a bit more about the next major Android update, which presumably would be Android “O”. Not much is known about the update for now, but a report from VentureBeat has shed some light.
According to the report, it seems that Google has been working on smart assistive features for Android. However the report claims that their source has told them that not all of these features might necessarily find their way into the next Android build, but Google is working on them anyway. Given that developers do work on features that don’t necessarily make the cut, it is understandable.
One of the rumored features is called “Copy less”, so if someone asks you for the location of the restaurant you’re meeting them at, and you were to Google its address, going back to the chat you might only have to type “it’s at” and a suggestion with the address could appear, whereas before you’d have to copy and paste it, which can sometimes be a bit finicky.
Another feature could be how Android treats certain messages, so once again if someone sends you an address in a message, tapping on it would launch something like Google Maps with the location pinned to it. There are also claims of new gesture recognition where you could draw a letter on the screen to bring up certain apps or launch certain functions. Take it with a grain of salt for now, but they do sound rather exciting and we wouldn’t mind seeing them in the next Android build.